I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

I decided it didn’t matter.

As it happens, I don’t mind being alone with you.

I was mentally calculating my chances of reaching the truck before he could catch me. I had to admit, they weren’t good.

And then Edward stepped out from the trees, his skin faintly glowing, his eyes black and dangerous. He held up one hand and beckoned me to come to him. The wolf growled at my feet. I took a step forward, toward Edward. He smiled then, and his teeth were sharp, pointed.

I knew exactly where my pepper spray was — still in my duffle bag under the bed, never unpacked.

He’d been flinging questions at me with such speed that I felt like I was taking one of those psychiatric tests where you answer with the first word that comes to mind.

For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on my arms. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind.

I was sure, though, in the instant our eyes met, that he didn’t look harsh or unfriendly as he had the last time I’d seen him. He looked merely curious again, unsatisfied in some way.

His liquid topaz eyes were penetrating — trying futilely, I assumed, to lift the truth straight from my mind.